Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Cipollini Onion Vegetarian Sandwich


This sandwich is my new favorite. Why I never added these little sweet/tart onions before I don't know.  But I do know now and they are added regularly to all of my vegetarian sandwiches.

These little onions are pronounced (chip-oh-lee-knee) and are naturally sweet and white. The onions in my pictures are marinated and have an added flavor profile with tart and sweet results. I buy my onions from our local grocery store. They are found in the olive section. I have bought these before at Whole Foods too.

If you decide to buy these little morsels be prepared to encounter some peeling issues. Cooking Light has a nice piece about how to deal with the skin.

You can see from the picture below that adding them to your sandwich is easy. They are a little bit slippery-so be prepared. I slice the amount I need and then add them to the bread first. The bread kind of holds them on the sandwich.  I also use my favorite plant based mayonnaise. Recipe coming soon for the mayonnaise.


Of course, add as many as you want but I like to add a few more options to my sandwiches. For this sandwich I added: avocado, tomato, spinach, red onion, crispy jalapeno's, and orange bell pepper. Basically I want to eat the rainbow so I choose the ingredients that reflect that.

For the bread, I buy from our local bread shop a sour dough variety that is delicious. The name of it is Panini and the shop is small, smells amazing, and has really good baked goods.

This sandwich is not hard. I just wanted to share with you my new found obsession for these little onions.  They are an easy addition to any sandwich or bagel.

Eating vegetable sandwiches can get boring if you stick to the same basic ingredients and this is why I am always on the hunt for additional toppings.

ENJOY!

Sherron

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Black Quinoa Tamales #vegan


Who doesn't love tamales? Well, everyone at my house can't get enough of them when we make them.  The problem is that we don't eat them that often because we don't eat a lot of meat anymore. I got to thinking why couldn't I make them with a plant based filling?  Guess what?  You can.

I recently had black quinoa for the first time. It has a milder flavor profile to me. The white quinoa seems bitter even after I rinse it multiple times. This became my base. I added a can of drained and rinsed chickpeas, sauteed red onions, a bit of green onion for color, cumin, chopped cilantro, chili powder, salt, fresh minced garlic, fresh lime juice, and pepper. No recipe was used. I literally added, tasted, added some more, and tasted again. See picture below.

Honestly, the filling could be eaten on its own as a salad. I made the masa using the recipe on the package of Masa Corn Flour. It worked like a charm.  If you want to see a recipe for the dough this site will help you: HERE for the tamale dough.


I make the filling, soak the cornhusk, and make the dough about the same time. The cornhusk need time to soften a bit, the flavors in the filling can sit and marry, and then the dough can rest for a while too according to directions on package.

When your ready to assemble, gather a few things: a cookie tray to stack them up, your masa dough, your filling, and find a work space. I use a cutting board. Take a few cornhusk and shred them into smaller pieces to use as ties on the end of each side of the tamale. See picture below.


Spread the dough on the cornhusk. Add the filling. This is how I do it: I roll from one side until the sides meet and then make sure they are sealed. It works.  Wrap the cornhusk around the tamale and secure the ends.


I have a huge stock pot to steam the tamales in. I add enough water to sit below a rack that I place in the bottom. I layer the tamales so that the steam can easily get around each of them. See picture above.  I let them steam for a few hours. I add water about every 30 minutes to make sure that my pot does not go dry.


I remove the tamales when they are done. I serve them on the cookie tray. We like ours with ketchup.


These tamales reheat well the next day.  For our family of six I usually make about 30 tamales.


Thursday, February 2, 2017

Fried Udon Noodles with Sesame Seeds


I have been making homemade noodles for a long time. They taste better. Our family enjoys the process of working with the dough. My kids think its cool to get their hands in the dough. Homemade noodles are a bit time consuming because you do have to prepare the dough a few hours before dinner. This allows the dough to rest. 

This is a list of some of the homemade pasta recipes on the blog:


Yep. We like our pasta and I make a lot of it for my family.

A friend of mine posted about this new cookbook by Morimoto that introduced Japanese cooking to the home cook. I love Japanese food and had to have this book. It's beautiful. I bought the book not knowing what to expect because I have other Japanese cook books that are filled with ingredients that I can't easily get here in Newport.  Not this book. He sticks with easy to find ingredients and basic recipes. I really enjoyed the photography, the easy recipes, and his story that he shared in the beginning of the book of his training and early family life. Oh, by the way, this is not an ad for his book. This is just me telling you about his book and why I love it.


We usually buy Udon noodles from our local Asian market here in town. I buy them frozen.  When I saw his recipe I knew that I wanted to give this a try.  They were easy to make. The dough is three ingredients: water, flour, and salt.  The pasta dough does need to sit for an hour before you roll it out but we had plenty of time in our day so this was not a problem.

Once the dough was rolled out I used a very sharp knife to cut the noodles into long strips.  I recommend having a long straight edge knife and lots of flour. I boiled my water. These noodles are thick so they do need to boil for 12 minutes. They puffed up and came out perfect.


I heated a small amount of vegetable oil, with a dash of sesame oil, some sesame seeds, and tossed my noodles into a very hot pan. I fried the noodles for about 5 minutes and sprinkled them with soy sauce.  Served hot with our homemade GYOZAS.  Dinner was delicious this night.

In addition to serving the noodles with a splash of soy sauce, I also put a few sauces that we like to eat with our noodles on the table,  for our guest to pick and choose, like: plum sauce, sweet and spicy sauce, and tonkatsu sauce.



I do not have permission to share the full recipe on my blog as this is a personal choice to write about his cookbook and not a sponsored event, but Steamy Kitchen  has a review along with permission to share the recipe on their site.

Follow the link to get the recipe for Homemade Udon Noodles by Chef Morimoto HERE.

I do hope that you try making homemade pasta and definitely try frying the noodles up with a little bit of sesame oil and sesame seeds.  They are fat, chewy, and oh so yummy!

We ate the noodles so fast (they are best hot) that I did not have a chance to snap a picture of the finished noodle dish. I will making these again in the future and will update the post with a picture at that time.


Finnley likes to help in the kitchen too. This little video is her working with some flour as I was preparing the udon noodles. Apparently, her batch needed a bit of air.

Donut Breakfast Casserole

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